List of Famous people born in Massachusetts, United States of America

Douglas Jerome Preston is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child, he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

John Robert "Haj" Ross is a poet and linguist. He played a part in the development of generative semantics along with George Lakoff, James D. McCawley, and Paul Postal. He was a professor of linguistics at MIT from 1966–1985 and has worked in Brazil, Singapore and British Columbia. He is currently at the University of North Texas.

Roger Wolcott was a Republican lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. He was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts from 1893 to 1897, becoming Acting Governor in 1896 upon the death of Governor Frederic T. Greenhalge. He was elected governor in his own right in 1897, serving until 1900. He was a leading figure in the Young Republican Club, which revitalized the Massachusetts Republican Party in the 1890s.

Abigail Adams was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, as well as the mother of John Quincy Adams. She is sometimes considered to have been a Founder of the United States, and is now designated as the first Second Lady and second First Lady of the United States, although these titles were not used at the time. She and Barbara Bush are the only two women to be married to one U.S. president and the mother of another.

Boney James is an American saxophonist, songwriter, and record producer.

John Hayden Lynch is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 80th governor of New Hampshire from 2005 to 2013. Lynch was first elected governor in 2004, defeating first-term Republican incumbent Craig Benson – the first time a first-term incumbent New Hampshire governor was defeated for re-election in 78 years. Lynch won re-election in landslide victories in 2006 and 2008, and comfortably won a fourth term in 2010.

James Edward Rothman is an American biochemist. He is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and the Director of the Nanobiology Institute at the Yale West Campus. Rothman also concurrently serves as adjunct professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University and a research professor at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London. Rothman was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his work on vesicle trafficking. He received many other honors including the King Faisal International Prize in 1996, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research both in 2002.

Levi Lincoln Sr. was an American revolutionary, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A Democratic-Republican, he most notably served as Thomas Jefferson's first attorney general, and played a significant role in the events that led to the celebrated Marbury v. Madison court case. He served two terms as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, acting as governor for the remainder of Governor James Sullivan's term after his death in December 1808. Lincoln was unsuccessful in his bid to be elected governor in his own right in 1809.

Walter A. Brown was the founder and original owner of the Boston Celtics as well as an important figure in the development of ice hockey in the United States.

George Tomasini was an American film editor, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, who had a decade long collaboration with director Alfred Hitchcock, editing nine of his movies between 1954 and 1964. Tomasini edited many of Hitchcock's best-known works, such as Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963), as well as other well-received films such as Cape Fear (1962). On a 2012 listing of the 75 best edited films of all time, compiled by the Motion Picture Editors Guild based on a survey of its members, four films edited by Tomasini for Hitchcock appear. No other editor appeared more than three times on this listing. The listed films were Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.